What Is a LONE Worker
There have always been “lone workers” (also called “remote workers”) in the world economy: people whose jobs kept them out in the field, whether in remote locations or just out of the office and working from home (or a coffeeshop or co-working site).
Think site inspectors, forest rangers, mobile salespeople, real estate agents, installers for solar and other systems, programmers, foreign aid workers, creative workers, and more. It’s a long list!
The Age of the LONE Worker
Well, with COVID-19 “work from home” (WFH) that list has just gotten longer: working out of the office, and out of site and earshot of your colleagues, has become the norm in many countries.
Office spaces in many cities have emptied out, at least temporarily, while knowledge workers try to create good working spaces in their homes or apartments — while working on their zoom skills (and virtual backgrounds).
What are lone worker hazards 🚑
The risks for lone workers depend largely on the setting: hazards in a remote rural area will be different from those for a co-working graphic designer in an urban area, but there will be overlap. As a starting point, of course, there is simply the risk of reduced supervision: the lone worker may have veered off track from planned activities. But other than hazards for the work plan, of course there can be hazards to the worker themself, including:
medical emergencies
accidents
threats of violence or social instability
LONE WORKERS SAFETY and the Law
There are a variety of legal requirements for lone workers in the United States, many of them specifically related to particular jobs. For example, the laws regarding mine workers specifically state that
No employee shall be assigned, or allowed, or be required to perform work alone in any area where hazardous conditions exist that would endanger his safety unless he can communicate with others, can be heard, or can be seen.
For shipyard workers, the law is even more detailed:
Whenever an employee is working alone, such as in a confined space or isolated location, the employer must account for each employee (29 CFR 1915.84(a)):
Throughout each workshift at regular intervals appropriate to the job assignment (29 CFR 1915.84(a)(1)); and
At the end of the job assignment or at the end of the workshift, whichever occurs first (29 CFR 1915.84(a)(2)).
Employees’ working alone must be accounted for by sight or verbal communication (29 CFR 1915.84(b)).
Acceptable means of visual communication may include the use of a camera or in-person.
Verbal communication must include both parties speaking. Examples of suitable verbal communication may include a two-way radio (walkie-talkie), in-person, or intercom system usage.
Cell phones may be used in areas where there is consistent reception. Reception can be limited, such as below deck.
Methods of communication that have low reliability and are not acceptable means for employee accountability include the sound of power tools, whistles, or tapping on tank walls, bulkheads, or decks.
Of course, most of us don’t work in shipyards, and many readers may not be bound by US law, but the rules above do lay out two good common-sense elements for any lone worker monitoring program:
contact the worker at regular intervals
use electronic methods when available and reliable
What makes a good Lone Worker Safety App
So if electronic methods make sense for remote worker safety monitoring, what kind of methods can you use?
Obviously, there’s the old-fashioned “phone tree” where some employee takes the time to call (or, nowadays, text or email) each remote worker. This isn’t a bad approach if there’s an emergency but definitely gets laborious if you need to do it every day.
And for a good lone worker safety system, you DO need to do it every day!
Luckily, there are a wide variety of apps and other systems that give you the ability to ping your workforce periodically and easily, just to make sure all is well. Good for business, good for the employees, good for the law.
These systems might use mobile apps, automated (or even manual) phone calls, SMS, or other approaches. And the pricing is just as varied, from DIY voice calling — which doesn’t work for anything other than very small organizations — to automated systems costing tens of thousands of dollars a month.
A good lone worker safety app needs to be easy, both to set up and to use (and to modify when needed) and affordable.
We think we’ve hit all those bases with Magpi’s Chat options.
Let’s look at a couple of hypothetical examples.
Example 1: Construction Company Check-In
Acme Construction is a (fictional) medium sized Chicago-based company with 200 employees, many of whom are moving from one work site to the next over the course of a day. This kind of flexibility helps Acme stay on top of their jobs, but it can make it hard to keep track of who is “in” and who isn’t. Acme needs some kind of reliable, affordable remote worker safety monitoring.
Acme can use an annual Magpi Pro account and the built-in Chat system to set up a basic daily lone worker monitoring service (essentially, a quick check-in) that goes out to most of their 200 employees every morning at 10am, on every one of the roughly 250 working days of the year.
Example of a lone worker check-in system
The Pro account allows Acme to automatically route all the employee responses to an Excel or Google spreadsheet. And there’s no app for workers to install or maintain: each employee just gets a text every day with a link, and tapping the link brings them to a quick interactive chat in their device browser.
And Acme can even automatically notify a supervisor by email or text if the worker reports a problem. All within Magpi (there are loads of additional possibilities if you also use tools like Zapier, our favorite integration utility).
So how many check-ins per year will Acme need? That’s 200 workers x 250 working days per year = 50,000. Cost-wise, it breaks down as:
Pro account $5,000 annually, including 6,000 credits (a credit is used up each time an employee checks in)
Extra credits = (50,000 - 6,000) x .225 per extra credit = $9,900
Total cost = $14,900 annually ($1242 per month)
$1242 a month beats most other lone worker monitoring systems, hands down. And notice that there aren’t any costs for computer servers or programmers, or technicians, because Magpi’s outstanding support staff can help Acme set up a basic system in minutes — at no additional cost.
Example 2: International Nonprofit EARTHQUAKE RELIEF
International development workers are often “out in the field,” working in some of the most remote places on earth. Whether it’s for child vaccination campaigns (the first inspiration for Magpi) or forest conservation or disaster response, it’s essential for managers to know where their staff are and that they are OK. In this instance, Magpi again can provide easy and affordable remote worker safety monitoring.
Aid workers in Haiti
Development Science International (DSI) is a fictional development nonprofit working in Haiti on earthquake relief. They have 25 staff members in-country. Haiti has pretty good cellular coverage (it was disrupted after the last earthquake but is almost 100% again), so that helps — and their 20 staff members use Android tablets with SIM cards, just perfect for Magpi Chat.
As with Acme Construction, DSI wants to send messages to all of their Haiti staff, but they’d like to do check-ins twice-daily, seven days a week. So that’s 25 staff members x 365 days per year x 2x per day = 18,250 check-ins per year
The cost breakdown looks like this:
Pro account $5000 annually, including 6,000 credits (a credit is used up each time an employee checks in)
“Low cost, any phone, no app to install, no-code integration with Google and Microsoft — sounds good!”
Extra credits = (18,250 - 6,000) x .225 = $2756.25
Total cost = $7,756.25 annually ($646 per month)
Just $646 per month? Wow. And just as with Acme, Magpi will help DSI set up their system for free, making this a very cost-effective way to increase safety and security in a tough environment.
Of course, we don’t expect you to take our word for it: check out any other lone worker monitoring service, or working alone monitoring device. We think after due diligence you’ll agree that Magpi can provide great value.
How To Protect Staff with a Lone Worker Safety App
As mentioned in the two examples above, Magpi will help you set up your system at no additional cost — although we’d be the first to admit that this will be about the easiest technical setup imaginable.
You’ll need to have a list of the names and contact info for your workers, of course, and how often you’d like to “check in” on them (once a day is pretty standard). And you’ll have to think a bit for how you’d like to handle any reported problems. So if you ask workers “are you OK?” and someone says they are not okay, what do you want to happen next. You could, for example:
tell the worker to seek medical treatment
notify a safety coordinator in your organization
request further information
log the response in a database or spreadsheet
or maybe all three. Or perhaps you’ve got some other workflow in mind. Magpi can show you how to easily integrate remote worker safety monitoring responses into your existing systems.
Learn More
Want to learn more?
Whether you want to schedule a demo of Chat or just sign up for a Magpi account and start moving forward, we’re ready to help you. We can lead you through key features, demonstrate exactly how they work, and/or help you more precisely estimate costs based on your unique circumstance. Most importantly, we can help you move forward with worker safety.
So that when your workers are working alone . . . they’re not alone.